Are 710,000 Irish people dating an AI Chat Bot?
Our results indicate that social integration is related to better
physiological functioning and lower risks of physical disorders in a
dose–response fashion across life stage samples. [1]
We all have people in our lives be them friends, family, or romantic relationships – and studies have shown that social interactions make us happier and even reduce the risk of physical illness [1]. Can artificial intelligence fulfill our need for social interaction? The jury is still out on that – but Pure Telecom say that up to 10% of Irish adults are trying anyway. This is an interesting claim, but is it accurate? It would translate to up to 710,000 people using AI to have emotional connections with something that isn't actually alive. Does AI influence these people's behaviors, shaping their views on society?
What is a "romantic relationship", anyway?
What constitutes a romantic relationship is not always the same from person to person, and indeed it's not clear exactly what question was asked of people on the survey. Is it a fleeting flirtation, a casual chat, or a deeply ingrained emotional connection? If not all the respondents agree on what is being asked, the conclusions we can draw are much more limited.
Are we even talking to the right people?
There is very little information about how the survey was administered, if we're going to make assertions about what Irish people are or are not doing, we need to make sure we are actually asking Irish people, doing otherwise means our data is wrong. If the survey was not limited in some way, anybody on the internet could have filled the survey out meaning we can't really be sure the results of the survey pertain to Irish people.
Margin of error
The population of the island of Ireland is about 7.1 million people [3], and about 1000 people were surveyed in this online survey [2], which equates to a margin of error of about 3%. This means that if the data in this survey are accurate, somewhere between 7% and 13% of Irish adults have engaged in some kind of romantic relationship with artificial intelligence given a 95% confidence interval. So the number of people apparently polled seems to give us a relatively low margin of error which is good.
What does this mean?
It's unlikely in my opinion that 10% of Irish adults have developed deep romantic relationships with AI. A more realistic interpretation might be that this percentage has experimented with AI chat bots in ways that felt personally meaningful or intimate, even if briefly. Unless the online survey was controlled in some way to ensure only Irish people filled it out we also cannot be sure it even relates to Irish people.
The research clearly indicates that people are thinking about this issue and that potentially some small percentage of the population does use AI in this way, however to answer these questions we need higher quality research with published methodologies, instead of a headline-grabbing claim like this.
Y.C. Yang, C. Boen, K. Gerken, T. Li, K. Schorpp, & K.M. Harris, Social relationships and physiological determinants of longevity across the human life span, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 113 (3) 578-583, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1511085112 (2016) [1]